Where did Islamic State emerge? Long before Islamic State declared its caliphate, it was the radical and genocidal brainchild of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Born in Jordan, al-Zarqawi was a troubled youth for most of his life. Involved in crime, he was arrested several times. Things changed when he went abroad. Around 1989, he arrived in Afghanistan just as the Soviets were leaving. He did not participate in the fighting, but he cut his teeth participating in the subsequent civil war erupting. Reportedly not very religious before arriving in Afghanistan, he began his radicalization process here. He first acted as a journalist, reporting on the incipient conflict among rival warlords before becoming immersed in the war. It was in Afghanistan where he befriended his mentor, the Jordanian Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a notorious Salafist, who set him on his ultimate trajectory.
Both men returned to Jordan in 1993 and were arrested following a failed bomb plot. Prison was a bountiful time for al-Zarqawi, as he distinguished himself as an experienced jihadist with a radical, if not so erudite, interpretation of the Qur’an, bringing to himself untold attention from his prison-mates and recruiting members for his organization, including Iraqis and Syrians. These individuals would become important fighters for al-Zarqawi and, later, IS during the following two decades. Reports suggest that al-Zarqawi had a falling out with al-Maqdisi in prison because of the former’s more aggressive and muscular interpretation of jihad, which made him more popular among the inmates and which saw al-Maqdisi sidelined. Eventually, in 1999, the Jordanian government released al-Zarqawi and others arrested for terrorist activities during an amnesty program.
After his release in 1999, al-Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan, where he met with Osama bin Laden. Reports from the era suggest their meeting was frosty. Bin Laden was not impressed by the brash and impetuous jihadist who seemed set on achieving his own agenda at the expense of others. Al-Zarqawi, for his part, disliked bin Laden’s relatively tempered approach to jihadism, finding him too cautious and disliking his approach of targeting Western targets over governments in the Middle East he deemed as apostates. Crucially too the first divergence in strategic preference emerged here. Even though al-Qaeda had killed hundreds of Muslims at this point, bin Laden sought to limit the deaths of his fellow coreligionists, as his priority was to unite all Muslims against the West. Al-Zarqawi, coming from an even more extreme perspective, felt that the priority of jihad should be to kill apostate Muslims, mainly Shiites, but also other confessional sects that deviated from his rigid interpretation of Islam. Bin Laden found these ideas to be anathema and abhorrent. He had a Shiite mother, and al-Zarqawi seemed unlikely to listen to him. There was also the not-so-minor issue of both men coming from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds. Osama bin Laden came off as the more educated of the two relative to the mostly self-taught al-Zarqawi. In some ways, this meeting set the stage for the eventual separation of IS from al-Qaeda due to differing outlooks about the world. Regardless, this meeting proved propitious for IS. After the intervention of others, bin Laden gave al-Zarqawi seed money to start a training camp for other Jordanian radicals released in 1999, out in Herat.
Herat, in western Afghanistan, would serve as al-Zarqawi’s base of operations for two years. Relations with al-Qaeda proper remained precarious, as al-Zarqawi supposedly refused to swear a bayat, or oath of allegiance, to Osama bin Laden. After 9/11 and the subsequent American invasion, al-Zarqawi participated in the counteroffensive but was regarded as an unreliable follower of Osama bin Laden. Soon after, he fled to Iran and remained there for over a year, where he husbanded his troops and prepared his organization for the inevitable war in Iraq being planned by the United States. Working with an extremist Kurdish organization in northern Iraq, al-Zarqawi infiltrated the country in February 2003 and by March was organizing one of the more prominent elements of the Iraqi insurgency, although not the only one. Also worth remembering is that while al-Zarqawi was associated with Osama bin Laden and the global jihadist movement, al-Zarqawi still maintained a large degree of independence and was not necessarily a formal part of al-Qaeda, as the Bush administration maintained at the time.
THE IRAQ WAR AND THE EMERGENCE OF AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ
To understand the history of Islamic State, one must be cognizant that it is only partially explained by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the policies adopted by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath. The irony of this invasion is that one of the pretexts for it was the claim by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were working together. Very little evidence backs this up. In spite of this, the invasion catalyzed the group that would manifest into Islamic State by destroying the safeguards against sectarianism and creating the conditions for any insurgent group to organize and mobilize. Like many things in war, the invasion improved the probability that a group like it would emerge but was not entirely deterministic. IS, in its current manifestation, is primarily an Iraqi group that uses foreigners. The organization that al-Zarqawi was building initially relied on largely foreign Arab cadres that lacked social buy-in from locals and in many ways represented an alien power taking advantages of a fractured government. Up until 2003, Iraq was more or less a secular state ruled by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (referred to here as the Baath Party), with Saddam Hussein as its figurehead. Although sectarian divisions existed within the country prior to the war, largely because of the paramount role played by Sunnis in the Baath Party, these cleavages were regulated through heavy repression designed to produce an Iraqi national identity capable of mobilizing for war, whether against the United States or Iran. This identity was shattered by the invasion.
There are two key reasons for this. First, by removing Saddam Hussein from power, the United States and its coalition partners changed the political calculus for the various elite entities operating at the regional and provincial level and mobilized elements capable of competing with the Baath Party for influence. Hussein, brutal as he was, served as a referential point in terms of an individual to fear and to respect, creating a singular target for these groups to focus on. In this regard, Hussein’s repression of the worst political excesses in the country simultaneously limited the formation of secondary or tertiary identities capable of rivaling the national Iraqi character and also created a political cleavage that played the paramount role over parochial interests of these sub-elites. Phrased differently, the personality cult around Hussein helped instill an imagined political community that united people in the country from across immense geographic expanses, giving the impression of a united Iraqi nation. Second and related to the previous point, although the Baath Party largely favored Sunnis in a country where they were not a majority, it still created cross-cultural exchanges among Iraqis of various political backgrounds hoping to persevere, survive, and perhaps excel under the dictatorship. This type of contact helped ordinary Iraqis maintain a collective identity that deprioritized perceived cultural differences from a religious background. The destruction of the Baath Party demolished the one civil body that prioritized interethnic and interfaith exchanges among ordinary Iraqi citizens.
The importance of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party in terms of unifying Iraq was made evident shortly after the invasion. After the United States and its coalition partners defeated the Iraqi military in a matter of weeks and took control of Baghdad by April 2003, the real fighting began in earnest in May 2003. Lacking a viable plan for reconstruction that integrated the various ethnic and sectarian groups into a monolithic whole, the Bush administration prioritized de-Baathification to stamp out any lingering influence from Saddam Hussein. The process of excising out remaining former-regime elements from a new government is an old practice designed to help exorcize an emerging government from the evils of its predecessors. The goal is not necessarily to collapse a government wholesale, but only the elements that animated it to commit evil. The United States engaged in a similar process in both Germany and Japan at the conclusion of World War II to delegitimize the old regime and impose a new government free of “original sin.” These efforts recognized the importance of basic government services and maintained a degree of continuity in terms of bureaucracy.
De-Baathification was more extreme. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq tasked with rebuilding the country, extended the order to include the full dismantling of the entire Iraqi government and civil service, smashing any semblance of order in the country. Regardless of their background or degree of fidelity to the Baath Party, many midranking government employees lost their jobs. This created chaos as public service jobs, such as trash collection or mail delivery, had to be refilled, but it also created a groundswell of resentment among the newly unemployed, many of whom were Sunnis. More worryingly, de-Baathification included wholesale dismembering of the Iraqi military, displacing tens of thousands of trained soldiers who suddenly lacked a way to earn a living. Sunnis in the country felt threatened, as the transition government imposed by the United States was mainly Shiite in character.
Into this chaos, al-Zarqawi inserted his organization, exploiting the mounting grievances experienced by many in the country. T. X. Hammes has characterized the Iraqi insurgency as a leaderless networked mosaic insurgency involving various rival groups coordinating their activities against the coalition and against themselves. There was no particular Islamist strain to it initially, but it became prominent with the passing of time. While the coalition forces, mostly formed from democratic countries susceptible to public opinion, were attacked to dissuade them from remaining in Iraq, much of the heavy violence took on a particular genocidal character as Sunnis and Shiites began targeting each other. This was a by-product itself of the paucity of strategic knowledge the United States had of the country, as it never made an effort to reconcile the secular national identity that characterized Iraq under Hussein. Al-Zarqawi sought to exacerbate these tensions by targeting Shiites as much as possible starting in the summer of 2003 and disseminating extremist propaganda to unite the Sunnis under one banner. Aside from employing religious rhetoric to demonize Shiites as apostates, al-Zarqawi also played on Sunni fears of invasion from Iran through the fifth column composed of Shiites. Not surprisingly, various religious groups emerged and began proffering protections to their neighborhoods and religious sects.
Al-Zarqawi complemented his attacks on Shiites by launching grand attacks against foreign targets, including the Jordanian embassy and the Canal Hotel, which killed the main UN representative in the country, Sérgio Vieira de Mello. He later began circulating gruesome beheading videos, most notably the Nicholas Berg video, further bolstering his organization as the forefront of the insurgency. These widely shared videos attracted thousands of recruits from across the Middle East and soon made al-Zarqawi’s group the most visible element of the global jihadist movement. These developments angered Osama bin Laden, as it seemed that his group was being eclipsed by an upstart group differing in tactics and strategy. This was at a time too when the United States was arguing publicly that core al-Qaeda was no longer a threat after being destroyed in Afghanistan, burnishing al-Zarqawi’s credentials even more. For a year and a half, al-Zarqawi maintained communications with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership. Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, criticized al-Zarqawi for singling out Shiites and for the excessive use of violence against Muslims in general. Nonetheless, al-Qaeda offered resources necessary for the insurgency to continue, leading to al-Zarqawi officially pledging an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden by the end of 2004. Al-Zarqawi also renamed his organization al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
The transition toward an official al-Qaeda franchise did little in tempering AQI’s violence. Throughout 2005, high rates of killings continued, but increasingly, much of it was directed toward Sunnis living in areas controlled by the group, which increased as leaders in Iraq’s Sunni triangle were either assassinated or began fleeing the country. Presaging IS, AQI governed like a strict theocracy, punishing locals for the slightest perceived infraction, which only served to generate even more grievances against al-Zarqawi. Al-Qaeda’s leadership recognized this and chastised al-Zarqawi, admonishing him to focus on organization building and reducing the violence. This culminated with an infamous letter intercepted by American intelligence and later shared publicly in late 2005. AQI ignored this advice and bombed al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February 2006, one of the holiest Shiite shrines. The blast caused no deaths, but it triggered a violent wave of reprisals and counterreprisals, leading to the deaths of thousands. This incident transformed the war in Iraq from an insurgency to an all-out civil war between the various religious groups. Concomitantly, al-Zarqawi began reorganizing AQI to cement its position as the paramount rebel organization in the country, creating the Mujahideen Shura Council, which brought other Salafist jihadist movements under one banner. This eventually metastasized into IS.
Al-Zarqawi did not live to see the fruits of his labor. In May 2006, an American air strike killed him. Combined with the United States adopting a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that sought to win over the disenchanted Sunni tribes, AQI’s influence waned, and the level of violence decreased significantly over the coming years. The seeds of IS were planted, though.
HOW IRAQI POLITICS CREATED ISLAMIC STATE
In 2006, Iraq was a country without a government amenable to the needs of the various ethnic groups trying to form a new state. Tactically and operationally, the United States sought to fix the situation by co-opting the disenchanted Sunni tribes and giving them a buy-in into the new Iraqi government. It accomplished this by paying off Sunni fighters, increasing the number of ground troops to help secure the population, and taking a more anthropological approach to fighting AQI. This helped generate large amounts of human intelligence, which slowly led to the United States and the new Iraqi army uprooting AQI from large portions of the country. Most of the success centered on Anbar Province where the United States and its coalition partners cooperated with the so-called Sons of Iraq. The latter was a movement of disenchanted Sunni tribe members opposed to AQI’s violence and its attempt to supersede tribal customs and laws. These individuals knew their environment better than the United States, its allies, and the newly reconstituted Iraqi army, which consisted of mostly Shiites, and were able to identify AQI sympathizers, supporters, and members, pushing the group further into the periphery.
Starting in 2007, the levels of violence from sectarianism decreased. There was optimism that Iraq had been pulled from the brink and it could slowly bring itself back together. From this perspective, the United States succeeded. Politically, it also gave the American public the illusion of success as it sought to withdraw from the country by the end of 2011. These victories aside, it failed to address the main strategic problem plaguing Iraq: the lack of a viable government seen as legitimate by the majority of the country.
Ever since the American-led transitional government took shape in 2004, and through the country’s formulation and adoption of its constitution and its first election for a full-term government in 2005, Sunnis had rejected these efforts because of their overt Shiite influence. Much of the propaganda distributed by AQI, other Sunni insurgents, former Baathists, and other elements of the Iraqi resistance portrayed these efforts as a means for Iran to take over the country. This was worsened by the election of Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, the leader of the Islamic Dawa Party. Dawa is an organization that formed in the 1950s and has maintained ties to Iran since the 1980s. Indeed, it was part of the constellation of proxies used by Iran to try to destabilize Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s. Al-Maliki himself was a hard-line anti-Baathist—which, given the preponderance of Sunnis in the party under Saddam Hussein, easily took on harsh sectarian emphasis. After 2003, he was part of the committee tasked with executing de-Baathification, giving credence to al-Zarqawi’s propaganda.
Over the next nine years, with al-Maliki leading the country, efforts were made to soothe the tensions between the various regions and confessional sects. The United States committed itself to continue funding and training the Iraqi army and providing strong economic support to Iraq, which would further facilitate the reconstruction efforts. These moves were designed to help separate the country from the overt and covert influence played by Iran, either through its ties to Shiite groups in the country or through its direct connections to Iraq’s governing elites. Apart from being a geopolitical rival for the United States and its allies, many hoped that severing Iran’s influence would help foster, again, the notion of a national and secular Iraqi identity while easing some of the concerns and worries held by Sunnis in the country. Building on these efforts, the United States took advantage of the federalism built into the 2005 constitution. Using the promise of economic aid plus the new national strategy proposed during the 2007 Iraq War troop surge, the Bush administration pressured Iraq’s new government to cede more authority to Sunnis and Kurds. Most of these efforts translated into yielding authority to provincial governments in Sunni-dominated areas, but they stopped short of giving the degree of autonomy the Kurds experienced.
These efforts were half-hearted for a variety of reasons. Just by their sheer numbers, Shiites dominate the country, with anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of the population identifying as such. Sunnis, in contrast, only make up around 20 percent of the population. Regardless of the interests of the party or prime minister in power, Shiite interests would likely dominate over the wants of other groups, especially after the decades of repression and brutality experienced under Saddam Hussein. This came to pass in the form of Prime Minister al-Maliki. As noted previously, from the outset, al-Maliki took a stringent anti-Sunni tone, but this was downplayed when the United States backed his candidacy in 2005. At the time, he appeared weak and reliant on other power brokers. However, decades of operating covertly as a member of Dawa also made him wary of political rivals, habits he demonstrated later into his tenure. For the most part, beginning with his ascendency in December 2005 to the end of 2008, right before President Bush left office, al-Maliki cultivated the impression that he was hardworking, pliable, and moderate. This was partially a product of the circumstances, as Iraq was at the height of sectarianism. Even then, though, he showed his teeth by initially rebuffing American efforts to pay the Sunnis who had taken up arms against al-Qaeda.
After 2008, with President Obama in office and a stabilized country in hand, al-Maliki asserted himself. He first acted against his immediate Shiite rivals by seeking to take control of the militia headed by Muqtada al-Sadr, which was one of the most dangerous Shiite groups during the insurgency. Then al-Maliki went about intimidating political rivals, preventing Sunni politicians from participating in local elections, and moving close friends and associates of his into seats of power. He consolidated these moves by sacking many of Iraq’s senior military leaders in favor of those most loyal to him, changing the composition and the quality of command of this institution. Al-Maliki also backed away from promises of continuing to pay the Sunni fighters who had participated in the fight against AQI and from integrating them into Iraq’s security forces. So obvious were these largely anti-Sunni maneuvers that by 2014, when IS stormed across northern Iraq, around 80 percent of the military was Shiite. This overt sectarianism, in conjunction with al-Maliki’s evident ties to Iran, including the notorious General Qasem Soleimani—the head of Iran’s Quds Force—gave many Sunnis the impression that Iraq had become an extension of Iran.
The last real chance at preventing the future catastrophe came with the March 2010 national elections. The results showed al-Maliki losing to al-Iraqiya, a coalition formed by Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, and Christians. Al-Maliki questioned the results, accusing many of the same Western governments that were supporting him of rigging the vote, which led to a political crisis. Because of a decision by Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court, al-Maliki was given the first chance to form a government. Negotiations stalled for nearly six months. Nonetheless, after pressure from Iran, all Shiite organizations agreed to support al-Maliki, enabling him to form a government. This came at the cost of making concessions to ideological and religious rivals, which he would later renege upon and would help feed the tensions that engulfed the country four years later.
These moves by Iraq’s government created a political vacuum among Sunnis, who were never entirely convinced of the new model of governance in Iraq. Sunnis were distrustful of the Iraqi security forces and aware of how al-Maliki was centralizing power at the expense of the Sunnis, including jailing the Iraqi vice president. A major reservoir of discontent was building. This was compounded by the fact that the United States never fully eliminated al-Qaeda in Iraq, leaving enough of the organization intact, despite a constant game of whack-a-mole with its leaders. AQI recognized the increased sectarianism pervading the country and began reconfiguring in the shadows.
The first thing AQI admitted was that its model of governance had proven to be its key weakness. After al-Zarqawi’s death in late 2006, it still governed overtly in Anbar Province. There it imposed a Taliban-style rule, enforcing a strict interpretation of sharia law, which countervailed traditional tribal and local politics in the region. Reassembling itself and attempting to co-opt Sunnis, AQI started reforming itself with a less severe and capricious governing model. Helping it in this goal was the immense wealth the organization had garnered during the insurgency. Although IS is now recognized to be one of the wealthiest terrorist-cum-insurgent groups in history, it started accumulating a significant portion of its money during the Iraq War. Participating in banditry, kidnapping, and oil smuggling, AQI was bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. With such copious amounts of money, it could finance its shadow army.
The second thing that it did was a process of Iraqization of its organization. When al-Zarqawi entered the country in 2003, the core of his group was a mixture of Arabs from Syria, Jordan, and other parts of the Levant. In this sense, they were truly outsiders seeking to insert themselves in local politics. With the constant elimination of its leadership, either through arrest or assassinations, AQI adopted a more native posture, which helped it appeal to the disenchanted Iraqi Sunnis. Combined with its absorption of other Sunni insurgent groups and the gradual rebuilding of its fighting forces through prison breakouts, the terrorist group underwent a transformation until it became Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Important as well, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi assumed the role of emir in 2010.
Much criticism for the emergence of Islamic State is laid upon President Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. In many ways, this accusation is unfair. First, after 2005, Iraq was a sovereign country once more, meaning al-Maliki had the right to govern as he pleased. Regardless of the desires of the United States, any decision to remain in the country had to be approved by Iraq’s leadership. Second, President Bush, in the closing days of his administration, had signed the status of forces agreement (SOFA), which stipulated the withdrawal of American troops by 2011. National security hawks pushed for a continued American presence after this point to maintain the peace and keep leverage over al-Maliki, who was increasingly imitating other authoritarian governments in the region. President Obama did push to have this agreement extended, but al-Maliki played politics and refused to change domestic laws that would have subjugated American service members to Iraqi laws. He did put the matter to a vote shortly before the mandated departure date, but it did not garner sufficient support from parliament to extend and amend the 2008 SOFA. And besides, this vote was only permitted after Iran acquiesced, as it had been the true victor of the Iraq War. If anything, President Obama deserves blame for not using greater diplomacy after the 2010 Iraqi elections to force out al-Maliki and for ignoring signs that al-Maliki was transforming into a veritable autocrat in his own right. Perhaps with a more inclusive Iraqi leader, the organization that would transform into IS would have lacked the popular legitimacy necessary to govern.
THE ARAB SPRING, AL-QAEDA, AND ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND SYRIA
The next big inflection point was the onset of the civil war in Syria during the Arab Spring in 2011. As was true of many countries in the broader Middle East, the Syrian public became inflamed and sought reforms. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, witnessed what happened to the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, and later how the international community turned on Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Initially, he sought to buy off the protestors with token political reforms and a policy of general amnesty. The latter released an untold number of jihadists, many of whom had participated in the Iraq War and had ties to al-Qaeda. These peaceful overtures quickly turned violent, as Assad sought to crush dissent and quell the uprising before it consumed his regime. Having learned from his father’s brutal crackdown of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s, he soon unleashed the Syrian war machine upon the restive public.
During the Iraq War, Syria had been the main conduit for foreign fighters wishing to join AQI, making it a fertile ground for jihad. Al-Baghdadi and al-Qaeda’s central leadership realized this. Al-Baghdadi, with his group having been re-formed and expanding in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, dispatched Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a Syrian deputy of his, to start developing an expansion group in the late summer of 2011. Taking advantage of the cadre of Islamist fighting, al-Julani began forming what would become Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), later renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in 2016. The group committed its first attack in December 2011 and released a video announcing its formation in January 2012. Initially, it did not associate with al-Qaeda or ISI, but reports noted that many of its fighters had fought with AQI. JN proved itself a capable fighting force and increased its support among local Syrians as Assad’s brutality increased. It claimed responsibility for the dual car bombings in Damascus in March 2012 that killed twenty-seven people, as well as for executing thirteen men, whose bodies were later discovered in a mass grave, near Deir ez-Zor in May 2012. In October of that year, it set off three suicide car bombs in Aleppo that killed forty-eight people. By December 2012, the group was formidable enough that it had developed an anti-aircraft doctrine, declaring a no-fly zone over Aleppo. These and other attacks created a large public profile, which enabled it to become the public face of the Syrian fight and, at that point, the most visible element of the global jihadist movement.
Al-Baghdadi, authoritarian in nature—as his rule would later show—revealed JN’s links to ISI in April 2013 and sought to subsume the organization, using the name of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al-Julani was adamant about maintaining his independence and largely fended off al-Baghdadi’s efforts. He reaffirmed his loyalty to AQ, and that summer, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of AQ, rejected al-Baghdadi’s moves. Both men exchanged insults with each other for the remainder of the year, each issuing edicts undercutting the other. Al-Zawahiri finally incorporated JN into al-Qaeda’s global franchise system in December 2013, but this failed to end the dispute. At the same time, JN and the so-called ISIS began fighting each other, openly contesting territory and assassinating each other’s leaders. In January 2014, ISIS took over Raqqa, a city that JN had captured in March 2013. The fighting between both groups escalated in February 2014, when Ayman al-Zawahiri formally cut ties with ISIS because of its intransigence.
But many Syrian members of JN remained loyal during the split. ISIS still managed to poach a significant number of foreign fighters from JN and used this as the basis of its expansion into western Syria. Bitter infighting between both organizations ensued. JN had the upper hand among the other insurgent groups in Syria because it sought a more conciliatory and compromising approach to asserting its rule compared to ISIS’s more brutal and rigid approach to governance, which jealously maintained power. In addition, ISIS inherited its ideology from al-Zarqawi. It regarded all non-Sunnis to be apostates and pursued its same genocidal fervor into Syria. Wanting to provoke further sectarianism in the region, it brutally attacked other groups fighting against Assad. As such, JN maintained its paramount role in the Syrian insurgency. ISIS, though, apart from taking control of the Syrian city of Raqqa, which would become its capital after declaring the caliphate, also captured large swaths of the western Syrian desert near Deir ez-Zor. Combined with its efforts at breaking out imprisoned members of ISIS in Iraq, by the end of 2013, ISIS was primed and ready for its assault against Iraq. In January 2014, it captured Fallujah and Ramadi and in June 2014 captured Mosul. That month it declared the caliphate and renamed itself Islamic State, making al-Baghdadi’s organization the new go-to group for the global jihadist movement. The name change also implied that its focus extended beyond Iraq and the Levant. By calling itself Islamic State, it wanted the world to know that it claimed sovereignty over all Muslims and that its ultimate goal was world domination.
THE JABHAT AL-NUSRA THREAT, THE KHORASAN GROUP, AND THE CO-OPTATION OF ISLAMIC STATE’S CREDIBILITY
While Islamic State was ravaging Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda continued expanding its presence in Syria, making it the most important piece of the Syrian resistance in the beginning of 2015. When Jabhat al-Nusra emerged in 2012, it lacked the infrastructure and organizational capacity to wage an intense war against Assad. Furthermore, it had poor situational awareness of the politics affecting the Syrian theater. Because it did not appreciate the secular and demonstrative character of the Syrian opposition, its initial forays into the conflict saw it emphasizing terrorism against civilians rather than military targets. It also attempted to force a strict interpretation of sharia law, which was not appealing to the nationalist Syrians. The unpopularity of its initial moves forced it to recalibrate its approach. Fortunately for it, its Islamic image made it the initial beneficiary of the various foreign fighters arriving. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and an expert on the Syrian conflict, cites the importance of Syria in jihadist eschatology as the place where Jesus Christ will return, making it an attractive destination for radicals across the world. The influx of human capital helped it readjust its strategy and convert its focus into a purely Syrian issue rather than a pan-Islamic cause like Islamic State. Adopting this approach made it more amenable to other Syrian groups, facilitating alliance formation. Moreover, its leader, al-Julani, was a veteran of AQI and was witness to the effect an extremist approach to governance had on negating a group its popular appeal.
The intensity of the fighting created the need for alliances among the constellation of groups fighting Assad. From the secular to the Islamic, all agreed that Assad had to be removed from power. JN’s ability to fight made it a visible figure in the rebellion, making it one of the more popular elements among the opposition. It further grew in stature when it began doling out social services in places like Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor. In this moderated manner, JN managed to change popular attitudes toward it by imposing a type of fair, if strict, governance model that lacked the brutality or the capriciousness of Assad.
JN formally split from ISIS in April 2013 after al-Julani affirmed his allegiance to al-Qaeda. As mentioned above, the organization lost a significant portion of its fighting cadre. It also lost a significant source of funding. It, nonetheless, maintained important ties to AQ, which represented another source of funding, guidance, and experience. By summer 2013, AQ had deployed veteran jihadists to Syria and formed an interlinked group nicknamed, by Western governments, the Khorasan Group (KG). KG’s purpose was to use the safe haven afforded by the Syrian fight to recruit, plot, and execute major attacks against Western targets, allowing it to continue Osama bin Laden’s strategic priorities. KG also helped Jabhat al-Nusra rebuild and was important in the rebranding of the centrality of Syria in the global jihadist movement, giving it international legitimacy.
In August 2013, the world became aware of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrian opposition. Viewing the opportunity to brandish its Syrian outlook, JN ferociously attacked regime targets, helping maintain its support among the forces fighting Assad, especially as the Free Syrian Army, the main secular fighting force backed by the West, began losing steam. This demonstration of power created the intra-jihadist war between JN and ISIS in 2013, causing JN to lose large amounts of territory. Even with this loss of territory, it maintained the upper hand in Syria. Most important, Charles Lister notes that the group avoided the temptation of mimicking Islamic State’s hard-line theological approach or plotting attacks against the West to avoid becoming targets of American air strikes. Maintaining its moderate outlook kept it as the paramount leader of the jihadist movement in Syria once IS began retracting and losing ground.
Over the next two years, the Syrian rebels continued gaining ground and nearly defeated the Assad regime. In November 2015, Russia intervened to prevent this from happening, changing the tide of the conflict in favor of Assad. The evolving facts on the ground led to a series of failed diplomatic talks to end the conflict, which marginalized JN because of its ties to AQ. Recognizing that the al-Qaeda label made other Syrian Islamic groups uncomfortable being associated with it, most notably Ahrar al-Sham—a Syrian focused group with ties to the Syrian brotherhood—Jabhat al-Nusra nominally split away from AQ and renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS). This split was actually approved by Ayman al-Zawahiri, suggesting this was an effort to rebrand itself more so than a complete abdication of its role in AQ’s universe. By the end of 2016, it retained a strong force of nearly ten thousand fighters across Syria. Its contribution to lift the siege of Aleppo was not enough to prevent Assad from crushing the rebellion there, though.
The fall of Aleppo is significant for the future of IS and JFS. Assad crushed the heart of the non-Islamic opposition, making the only viable forces Salafi jihadist groups. JFS is already in position to exploit the changing political situation. IS will too, because plausible alternatives will be few and far between. Furthermore, Assad retook Aleppo with a thorough disregard for civilian casualties and with ample support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, and Russia, giving his victory a stringent sectarian character that will likely energize other radical Salafi jihadists. As the International Crisis Group argued in January 2017, Aleppo’s fall will not end the Syrian civil war and will most likely embolden Islamic groups, meaning both JFS and IS still have room to build.
STYMIED IRAQI REFORMS, ISLAMIC STATE’S DECLINE SINCE 2014, AND THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM
In August 2014, the United States launched Operation Inherent Resolve to push back Islamic State. Under President Obama, the strategy focused on reforming the Iraqi government to win back the disenchanted Sunnis, training the Iraqi military, ending the war in Syria, and cutting off the flow of foreign fighters. The first step was forcing Prime Minister al-Maliki to step aside in favor of Haider al-Abadi, a figure perceived as more moderate and inclusive. He immediately set out on building a more inclusive government and fighting corruption in the Iraqi military. His efforts at accomplishing significant reform stalled for a variety of reasons. First, Iraqi politics remained plagued by factionalism and sectarianism, limiting al-Abadi’s ability to pass legislation. Second, even though he was willing to integrate Sunnis, al-Abadi still depended on Shiite militias politically, further stymieing his reform programs. As such, by the beginning of 2018, Iraq had improved somewhat politically but remains fractured along sectarian lines.
The military effort was more successful. The use of air strikes and American-trained soldiers led to the slow erosion of IS positions over the next two and a half years, beginning by retaking Kobani in Syria and the Mosul Dam. The high rate of air strikes vitiated and weakened IS dramatically. The training effort took some time to commence, with an inability to field a capable fighting force by summer 2015. Things began to change in early 2016 with the seizure of Ramadi by the Iraqi military, which was done without using Shiite militias. The use of purely Iraqi military forces rather than Iranian-trained Shiite militias helped legitimize the war effort among Sunnis, who were concerned because of Iran’s overt role in the retaking of Tikrit in 2015. In 2016, the Pentagon claimed that IS had lost 43 percent of its territory and around 45,000 fighters by August of that year. The loss of Mosul and Tel Afar in 2017 deprived it of its last major cities in Iraq, making its power base exclusively Syrian despite it being largely an Iraqi organization. With JFS remaining the primary Islamic group there, IS will have a hard time operating in Syria. IS’s situation has worsened significantly since the group lost Raqqa, its territorial capital, in 2017. Seemingly aware of the challenge posed by continuing to hold territory, IS, shortly before losing Raqqa, made an organized effort to move its governing apparatus to Mayadin, a Syrian border town. The anti-IS coalition expected the group to continue its overt governance model in Mayadin, as it permitted easy access to both Syria and Iraq. But this was not to be the case, because Assad’s forces retook the town in October without much of a fight and with no sign of IS’s senior leadership, as IS had fled into the desert.
According to Hassan Hassan, a prominent security analyst at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, what is likely happening is that IS is shifting its Middle East strategy away from conquest to one based on insurgent warfare. Hassan notes that in various IS propaganda tracts in 2017, the group has sought to portray its activities between 2013 and 2014 as its most successful period, because of how rapidly it organized and took control of territory, suggesting the group is trying to prime its followers to accept this strategic setback as progress. In these circumstances, IS will most likely resume clandestine operations in Iraq’s Sunni regions, using both the carrot and the stick to rebuild its base. The group retains sufficient manpower to engage in protracted terrorism campaigns to assassinate prominent Sunni leaders and generate fear, and it fields a large cadre of experienced fighters capable of harassing the Iraqi military. Even if it no longer seeks to display its strength by holding territory, IS regains the advantage of being hidden, allowing it to project power through guerrilla actions. Furthermore, this process occurs within the context of a civil war, meaning it has the opportunity to recruit fighters locally and to engage in clandestine institution building. Likewise, its brand still has relevance abroad, even if it’s rather diminished, and it will still attract true believers. It has a model in al-Qaeda, as that organization has been engaged in a process of institution building and managing its brand since the death of Osama bin Laden. In the decade since bin Laden’s death, AQ has assumed the upper hand in Syria, solidified its position in Yemen, and expanded into India and Nigeria. If IS modifies this model to its own situation, it can easily return stronger and deadlier than before.
So what comes next? This extensive overview of Islamic State from formation to the present brings about a few key points. First, the group’s rapid gains in Iraq and Syria destroyed the global community’s illusion that terrorism was on the downswing following Osama bin Laden’s death and the Arab Spring, both of which happened in 2011. Whereas bin Laden’s death seemed to herald the death of terrorism’s ultimate mastermind, the Arab Spring initially promised a new form of politics for the Middle East distinct from the violence and autocracy that had characterized the region. Instead, the opposite happened. Autocracy returned with a vengeance, and many of the countries on the road to democracy stumbled and degenerated into civil wars. The two exceptions seemed to be Egypt and Tunisia, but the old problems continue, with terrorism on the rise in both places.
Second, Islamic State forced the broader public to reassess the ontological nature of terrorism. Although it was understood that terrorist groups could morph into insurgencies and hold territory, many dismissed the idea that a radical Islamic terrorist group could forge an ideology and a governing strategy capable of seizing a territory roughly the size of the United Kingdom. Many thought it was unlikely that such brutal tactics could ever find enough of an appeal to win the support of society, while ignoring the fact that the Taliban had accomplished something similar in the 1990s. Fortunately, IS overreached and invited reprisals that have left it a shell of its former self.
Third, Islamic State remains a potent threat not only in Iraq and Syria but also in many parts of the world. The same forces that animated the insurgency still persist. Despite Russian intervention into the Syrian conflict and the defeat of the rebels in Aleppo, Syria will remain a fractured country for years to come. It is unlikely that Assad will moderate his approach after nearly being defeated. He will most likely continue his scorched-earth approach on other rebel-held areas, hoping that he can replicate his success in Aleppo. In fact, he created even more hatred toward his government in April 2017 after reports emerged that he used chemical weapons again against civilians. Unfortunately for him, he will have to contend with the fact that his army is a fraction of the strength of what it was prior to the beginning of the war, that he is politically weakened and continues to survive because of the support provided by Iran and Russia, and that large swaths of Syria remain outside of his control. In addition, as an Alawite who used chemical weapons and is closely associated with Iran, Assad will remain the centerpiece of propaganda used by groups like JFS and IS to recruit radicals from across the world. Therefore, the Islamic resistance will have both a motive and the space to reorganize and continue fighting another day. JFS is already primed to do this, as the number of troops available to it continues to increase because of defections from IS. Salafi jihadists will be even more motivated if Russia continues supporting Assad, as many might associate the present struggle there with the birth of the modern jihadist threat during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s.
Iraq is in a similar position. Although it has retaken lost land including Mosul, the long-term animosity between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites continues. It is even likely that it is worse than during the peak of the civil war in Iraq in 2006/2007, as the Sunnis will have more grievances to make them suspicious of the government in Baghdad. For many Sunnis, given the lethargic pace of political reform and Iran’s overt role in helping Iraq counter IS, the impression that Iran has taken over the country will be hard to dismiss. This perspective will likely animate Sunnis to support IS, even if they hate it just as much as they hate Iran. In the case of the Kurds, over the last fifteen years, they have built their society and economy and are seeking any excuse to declare independence. This would greatly reduce the national oil supply, which would also reduce the available finances necessary for rebuilding the country. Kurds, in fact, held a referendum on independence in October 2017, which resulted in the Iraqi military entering the Kurdish town of Kirkuk and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, stepping down, which stalled the independence process for the time being. However, this may change in the coming years depending on what reforms occur in Iraq. In other words, the challenge for the government in Baghdad is that when it can no longer rally its population against IS, it will actually have to govern a diverse multiethnic state that has still to recover from a civil war. If reconciliation efforts are not made by the central government, then IS will still have a buy-in among key elements of Iraq’s civil society and could easily reconstitute itself in the future.
With this context in mind, despite the impending fall of Islamic State, the model it deployed in 2014 is still something worth emulating. If before 9/11 security analysts dismissed terrorism as a strategic nuisance that could not effect global change unless a group used a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), then IS showed that a localized insurgency combining state-building functions and terrorism tactically and operationally could achieve strategic impacts that threatened to undermine the state system itself. In doing so, it sought revolutionary change that would erase historical boundaries and create a supranational theocratic government that claimed sovereignty over all the Middle East and the world’s Muslim population. The fact that this nearly occurred is worth studying and exploring, as Iraq and Syria are not the only places suffering from this type of violence.